I have a small business and 6 years ago I bought a used piece of CNC shop equiment from an auction of a closed business. It operates off an old PC running windows 98. To operate the machine itself, there is a program written by the machine manufacturer that starts via an executable file. With me so far? Well, there are multiple versions of this and I had my dad get it running when he was visiting one summer. Drawback is he got the version of the software running that was on an older hard drive that has now failed. The software on the still good drives has the original owners passwords, not mine. My dad didn't make a backup copy of the hard drive and I didn't think of it. I do that for my other PC based equipment. I have a bruise on my forehead from slamming it into various objects for my oversight.
The program is pretty simple and only asks for a password, not a separate login ID. There are 3 levels of passwords. Top level allows the changing of machine settings. Mid level allows the creation of programs for operators to run. Base level allows operators to pull up programs and run parts. When the original owners had this software, they changed the passwords to their versions which negates the factory defaults. Again, this is simple so there are only 3 passwords. The factory tech support isn't much help with such an old machine other than send in the computer and they will redo everything for about $1k. Before I commit to this, anyone have any ideas? Or know of a simple dictionary cracker that will input various passwords until it finds the 3 that work?
Ideas? Thoughts?